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Even a rookie policeman has a far lower mis-identification rate than the best face recognition system.

Yes,the system should be used as you suggest - it raises a flag, and the officer on the spot decides whether the match is correct. In practice, what happens is that officers have an unwarranted faith in the system's infallibility, and will simply arrest anyone the system indicates may be a criminal.

If I happened to look similar to a wanted criminal, I might be arrested multiple times for no good reason. Can anyone spell "malicious arrest" and "defamation of character"?

Given certain countries' admission policies (I'm looking at you, USA!), I would not want even a mistaken arrest on my record. The additional hassle when travelling there would be extremely annoying.

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.

The tech in itself doesn't worry me. Viewed in isolation it's great, identify murders rapist, thieves drug traffickers etc and get them off the streets. Yah!

But when you look inconjuction with other technologies and at the laws that have been passed in the last twenty years, in which our rights have been slowly eroded (& will continue to erode). Who will they target once you get all the "bad" people off the streets, they are not going to dismantle the infrastructure, it'll be to much of an invested interest and so much power.

If the Chinese are using it, it most certainly is totalitarian abuse of power to monitor the enitre population.
If the US is doing exactly the same, it is for asserting the safety of the population.

If you had pointed out any such discrpancy in 1984, it would be newspeak.
If you point it out today, the respones is something like "Yeah, that is exactly the difference between totalitarianism and Freedom".

The issue with all of this stuff isn't about now, it's about the future. These types of technologies are going to get better and better, and they'll be incrementally implemented more and more and more over time. Eventually, it's going to get misused and misused badly by someone in power, and of course many, many times over in smaller ways along the way.

And there are always people in every country who believe that any measure is justified to achieve whatever goal they have. And that goal may be as laudable as protecting our security. But ultimately the systems they put into place to achieve that goal can become as dangerous as the thing they seek to protect us against when the folks in power start using it against us. The scarier part is when their interest is in protecting themselves. Consider a Nixon administration with the level of surveillance we have now, or what will likely be possible 50 years from now.

And by 'us' that means us collectively, or those questioning the government right to do this or that, or those opposing the party in power, or a company or organization that someone is power feels is not in the best interests of the country (which often translates to the interests of their political party or social view or themselves.)

And of course it really will hit the fan with something bad happens. Then those folks who have the 'by any means necessary' view of the world are often let off the leash (in a plausible deniability sort of way of course.) And the gains in latitude that they make in those situations are seldom pushed back all the way or even much at all after the crisis is over.

Everything is hunky dory until it's not. And ultimately, freedom is not free. That saying often means one particular thing, but it also means that, if you want to be free you cannot be perfectly safe.

I am afraid not. That is an essential part of the problem. We might conmdemn "totalitarian" practices with great intensity, but when we introduce very similar practices ourselves, it is far from "the sh*t hitting the fan", but to "secure the safety of the people of our nation".

Or something like that. In other cases it may be to secure the pureness of the souls of our children, or something else which is extremely tied to our morals or our culture as of this year. In any case: We are extremely good at finding reasons/excuses/explanations for our use of the same practices that we not along ago condemned in other cultures. Quite often, it should have been "the sh*t hitting the fan", but history tells ut that it just doesn't happpen in cases where our "free, democratic" socieety adopts pratices from totalitarian societies. We change a tiny little detail, claiming that this detail makes all the difference: It really is just a minor thing that we never would have considered as significant if it was presented by that totalitarian regime, but as long as we were the ones coming up with this detail, we can use that minor difference to distinguish what we do, which is perfectly acceptable, from what those others do, which is totally condemnable.

You misunderstood. The point was, that it WILL just creep up and creep up and creep up. THEN, when something bad happens (another 911'ish event), suddenly all of these capabilities will lose a large chunk of any controls that might have been put on them, in the name of safety and security. Or, worst case, we have some sort of 70's style social unrest, and it will be completely opened up against the 'trouble makers'. It's always easier for the more paranoid folks who take the 'security at all costs' approach to argue for their way when something goes wrong.

The problem is that then these relaxed restrictions seldom get re-tightened after we finish cleaning the fan blades.

For the most part I have no qualms with data about me being obtained and used to verify fair use/behaviour/whatever, or allow me to use some service and the likes.

What I do have a problem with is those data being stored anywhere that's accessible through the internet. Nowadays, no database is secure from getting hacked, and the data it contains is therefore potentially available for abuse of any kind.

This problem gets real when data are obtained in large amounts: large amounts of data means large databases, and that makes it a high priority target for hackers. Not that any hacker may have interest in any of those records, but these data can be sold for a nice profit to those that have.

You might say that it's a good thing the police can use these databases to help them find identify criminals. And I would concur.

But, remember: the criminals typically have much better equipment and expertise on their hands than the police, they are not limited by legislation, and they have the option to obtain any data they want, provided it has been recorded somewhere. Therefore, for any criminal caught by the police with the help of such data, 10 innocent people are harmed by criminals using the very same data.

I say, better not have that data in the first place. The crimes being prevented by not having these data stored anywhere would easily outnumber the crimes being prevented by criminals getting caught.

GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)

I have had Dell laptops for home and work for more than 20 years, and very few problems with them (cannot actually recall anything major). Upgraded my current one (three years old) from Windows 7 to 10, all went smoothly (if a little slowly) and runs very well, even though I almost always use hibernate rather than restart

I'm not sure if the quality varies based on the geography. I wish I could save all the money spent on servicing the machines.
I have limited experience with Dell. The latitude series I used during 2000s were good. But I'm no Dell man . If it's given at work I might still use. At home I always wanted a ThinkPad. & That consistently failed me. Lol in recent times it got pathetic.

"I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible."- Mr.Prakash One Fine Saturday. 24/04/2004

Yep, got it last week, I hear that the Merkan's get it next month and you Mason's will no longer have to rent out your tongues.

Michael Martin
Australia

"I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible."- Mr.Prakash One Fine Saturday. 24/04/2004